


City Lights

by oliwellwhocares



Category: Voltron: Defenders of Tomorrow, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk, M/M, Minor Violence, Motorcycles, but the truth is it's leakira, i'm tagging klance bc it sort of is, they shoot a guy but it's fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 15:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15844620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliwellwhocares/pseuds/oliwellwhocares
Summary: Leandro could have done this by himself, okay. Probably. Definitely. But Akira was there.





	City Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm late. I hesitated a lot before posting this, but here it is! Any mistakes are my own, and I hope you'll enjoy the first meeting of Akira and Leandro. I tried to make it badass. It probably didn't work.

In the middle of the city lights, between blue neons and bright patches of yellow lights, there was a corner of shadow. A small street, surrounded by tall buildings, usually dimly lit by the glowing red sign of a club that was shut down years ago. But now the sign was too old, or maybe broken. Today, in this lost street of a huge city, it was dark, completely dark, and Leandro was there. And he was lost.

Things had been going really fucking well, okay. If Pana was there, they would have said that it was going too well. But they weren’t here, and it was supposed to be fine. This was not his first solo mission, and it was supposed to be particularly easy too: just go there, make sure you’re alone, take the radio, go back.

Yeah. Apparently, he had messed up at the _alone_ part. He had been lucky enough to notice the guys waiting for him outside before they noticed him, but the access to the underground network was outside the damn building, and if they saw him, it was over. He had no idea who they were, but the less known the entrances to their half-secret base were, the better.

So he had hoped that he could sneak out through the back. He knew those streets, and he was pretty sure he had spotted all his unexpected guests.

 

So, this was definitely not his day.

He had ran, radio under the arm, and made all these efforts to end up in this goddamn dark alley, where he couldn’t see shit, which meant he had no idea where the door he was looking for was, even though he could have sworn it was _right here_. No idea where the other guys were either, since the sound of their footsteps had stopped right when they entered the street behind him. With his luck, they were probably cyborgs, able to move in perfect silence, and with night vision for good measure.

_Goddamn it Leandro, get it together. Keep your eyes open, you’ll get used to the darkness. In the meantime, listen. Cyborgs or not, they’re bound to make a sound._

His inner voice sounded annoyingly like a mix of his two best friends, but it’s not like they were wrong. He started to distinguish nuances of gray, and above the sounds of passing vehicles, and the far-away whistle of voices, there was something. A soft rumpling, then something faster, a little bit louder, and he jumped aside. A blast lighted the way between him and one of the assholes with blue skin that were ruining his night, and hit the wall, one meter from his head. Probably not able to see in the dark then, but not bad. He was ducking and rolling to his right before his brain had even registered everything he had seen, during the split second of illumination. The two other Shreeons, at the other side of the street. The usual sign, destroyed. The door he was looking for, the one he could lock behind him, on the other side. Behind the other guys. Shit.

Another blast was fired, landing three meters away from him this time, probably where the asshole thought he would go. Wrong move for him. Leandro wasn’t even sure the guy saw him before the blast reached him, paralyzing his body. Theoretically, not killing him, but it wasn’t like he had the luxury to care at the moment.

He threw the radio on the falling body, hoping it would be enough to keep it from harm, but didn’t have time to drew his second pistol before he had to dive on the ground. He had the incompetency of whoever decided to hire one-eyed aliens for this job to thank for being able to retreat behind a trashcan, but it wouldn’t last him long. One glance, and he shot. He heard the dull noise of a body hitting something, and when he looked again, one of the guys was slumping against the door, but he had probably hit the shoulder of something, because he looked like he was still conscious. Of course, because nothing ever went right in his life, he was still holding his gun, and before he had to retreat in the face of his third enemy aiming at him, he saw the bastard throw an interested glance at his radio. And that was absolutely unacceptable, because if he didn’t manage to bring back the target _and_ got himself killed, Alma would absolutely _destroy_ him.

Before his thought process could go farther into the tortures he would face, a noise from the far-away traffic grew closer, way too close, and suddenly it was here, a motorcycle barreling through the street and stopping just beside the body, between Leandro and his enemies. And when a mysterious guy shows up to save you, and your mission, on the coolest goddamn motorcycle you’ve ever seen, and yells at you “COME ON” while he breaks the arm of the only alien that wasn’t hurt until then, you don’t discuss, you get your target, and you climb on the motorcycle. His foot was barely leaving the ground when they kicked off, but this guy he had hit in the shoulder was _still raising his arm_ (learn to take a hint, man, it’s time to give up), and Leandro had time to fire once towards his chest before they turned around the corner.

He ran a quick check before asking if he wasn’t getting kidnapped. He still had two guns, a radio, his head and all his limbs, and even two shoes (you wouldn’t think shoes are the first thing you lose in adrenaline-fueled pursuits around town, but believe his experience. You would be wrong).

The second list of checks was about the man himself. Great bike, probably from the planet, judging by the typical design in black and faintly glowing lights. Not so sure about the guy himself. Skin that looked pretty human on his hands beneath fingerless gloves, and on his nape, half-hidden by black hair spilling from his helmet. Weird clothes too, a cropped jacket, pants that looked like jeans, all in all, the guy looked way too much like he was from Earth, and it made him uncomfortable. You don’t find a lot of humans in space, and he was supposed to know most of them. Apparently, not all of them.

“So thanks about that, I guess.”

He laughed, chest shaking a little bit beneath Leandro’s arms around him. Not many species laugh like that, either.

“You guess?”

“For all I know, you’re taking me to these guys’ base and delivering me to your boss, so if it turns out you’ve only retarded my failure and death by a few minutes, I have to say I won’t be as thankful.”

“I am taking you to _a_ base and delivering you to _my_ boss”, he answers, and you could hear a smile in his voice, “but I think you already know the princess.”

A beat passed while he relaxed, allowing himself to lower his arms closer to his driver’s waist, recognizing the road they were taking. As far as he knew, no one else called their boss princess, even thought Alma has always told them not to. She probably wasn’t gonna hate seeing him alive and with a valuable asset, though.

“My name’s Akira, by the way.”

He hid a smile against Akira’s jacket. This fucking name. Of course, it was adapted to the situation.

“Leandro. It’s nice to meet you.”

 

* * *

 

When the princess (“just Alma”, she kept reminding him with a frown, “I am not _your_ princess, am I”), showed him the motorcycle, he immediately couldn’t help thinking that it was all worth it. Going to space, fighting an intergalactic empire, he would do it again a thousand time because this was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, okay. Nashy-Ka was a planet renown for its technology, and based on what he had seen on the way, this reputation was not stolen. But this was something else. Alma was smiling while she explained the modification they had made to the vehicle, pleased by his obvious interest.

“Of course, you’re won’t be able to use it for now. Camaji will explain better than me once he’s done, but you’ll have to wait until Henare and Pana come back to really use it safely. In the meantime-”

“PRINCESS!”

When Alma was showing him around the base and they had passed by the altean who was just now showing up in the garage and almost tripping on his own feet, only his legs were visible from underneath whatever massive machine he was working on, but now he recognized the face he and Hachiko had spoken with several times before. Camaji was an expressive, sometimes dramatic man, but he had never seen him look panicked like that.

“Pana sent a communication, they were found out! The deal went wrong, they both managed to hide away for now but they need an extraction as soon as possible!”

“I’ll take the Shadow”, she answered immediately, readjusting her hair beneath her scarf.

“Princess, it’s too dangerous-”

“Too bad, it’s our only option.” As she spoke, she was already taking rapid steps toward a ship hidden in a corner, small, obviously made to navigate on the surface of a planet. “Do we have news from Leandro?”

Leandro. Funny to hear a name he used to know in a place like that, but in outer space, you can’t stop at every coincidence.

“None, he should still be inside, but we have no idea where their information comes from. He could be compromised too.”

This made her stop in her tracks. She stared at the wall for a moment, then turned to Camaji, determined.

“What is the state of Akira’s vehicle?”

The face he made in response was definitely not reassuring.

“Well, in theory it works, but...”

“It will have to be enough.” She turned to him. “Leandro is in the south district, we can’t go there with ships. Do you think you’re up for it?”

“Give me the coordinates.”

The princess gave him a small smile and went back to her own preparation, while the other altean gave him a black and red helmet, and fiddled with the controls for a few seconds.

“Alright, it should be fine! Just don’t touch any buttons that looks weird, and everything should stay in one piece!”

“Well that’s the best driving advice I’ve ever received.”

He hopped on the motorcycle, and on a sign of the head from Camaji, put the helmet on.

“Can you hear me?”

The voice sounded like he was speaking directly next to him, ringing uncomfortably in his ears.

“Loud and clear, a bit too loud, actually.”

While he was speaking, his vision suddenly lighted up, the way before him delimited by red lights, and a white line in front of him, leading to one of the many tunnels surrounding him.

“And I can see the way to go, too.”

“Perfect, you can leave! I’ll give you instructions on the way! And, sorry about the volume I guess, but it’s-”

At the moment he brushed the controls, red lines glowed on the motorbike, and it suddenly jumped forward, following exactly the way he wanted it to go. Oh, this was going to be amazing.

 

 

Akira drove underground for a while, and was almost surprised when he finally emerged in the middle of Knehot, the capital, covering a quarter of the planet. The lights around him were bright blue, almost blinding if his helmet hadn’t immediately adapted it to his vision, but as he kept moving, they dimmed, shifted, and when he stopped in front of the building he was looking for, it was almost completely dark, only a faint purple glow, illuminating no one but him. This couldn’t be good.

What was even less good would have to be the shooting sound he heard, coming from a few blocks away. His motorcycle kicked off the second he thought about it, and in a few seconds, he pulled up in an alleyway, lighted up only by his highlights. Brown skin, curly hair, two guns, perfectly fitting the description, Leandro was here, next to an inanimate alien with blue skin, but about to be shot up by two others.

“COME ON!”

During the ride, the voice in his helmet had told him to take whatever random bar of metal he could reach in the little trunk positioned at the end of the vehicle, _just for safety_. This came in handy when he felt bones cracking in the arm that was raised just in front of him, but he had to let it fall to the ground when he felt a weight behind him, leaving the cutthroat dump immediately. He heard someone fire a shot behind him, but a second arm followed the first already around his chest before he had the time to worry.

Arms solid around his chest. Brown skin, curly hair, a goddamn turtleneck for fuck’s sake. And when he spoke, with a light accent in a voice full of energy, there was absolutely no doubt left. Because apparently, life hated him. This wasn’t a random space Leandro. He knew this one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Just a warning, I don't know if I'll ever write what comes after that, but if I do, it's probably going to be more of a series of one-shots set in the same universe than a true coherent story... We'll see...


End file.
